I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). In my post from yesterday, I was reluctantly admitting that I wanted something more from the game that I wasn’t getting. I compared the game to a favorite hoodie in that it fit well and was comfy to be in as you lounged around the house, but it wasn’t a looker nor was it something you’d go to, say, work in. It’s the same hoodie you’ve worn for the past ten years, and it’s just something you hold onto no matter what.
And yet, you know you should throw it away at some point soon, but your heart screams at you not to do so. So you ignore that voice and keep on wearing it–taking care to wash it gently to slow down the wear and tear.
I think I’ve pushed that metaphor about as far as I can without breaking it. My point is that I have been playing with a lingering sesse of, “Is this it?” Everything that was in the last game was in this one as well. The bears you have to help. The resources you have to forage. Mr. Kit’s store and its ever-expanding inventory. There were a few differences, but I wasn’t that happy about it, one in particular.
It’s the one where when you do the repeated chores like mining ore, you see the corporeal forms of your fellow Spirit Scouts as they help you do the chore. I hope there’s a reason for it that will be uncovered later because right now, I find it quite pointless. Doing those chores don’t take much time individually–it’s more the sum of doing them all. And having a helper on one of, say, six chores doesn’t really help. If it were every time, maybe? But doing it this way just irritates me.
One thing from the last game that is in this game as well that I really like is Mr. Kit’s daily array of clothing and hairstyles. They change on the daily, and I try to buy…well, in the last game, I just bought them all. In this game, though, I’m buying the ones I like–and all the special ones whether I like them or not.
As I was playing today, I still had that small feeling of, “Is this all there is?” It’s weird because I was enjoying my time (comfort food), but at the same time, I wanted something new. Oh! One more QOL change that I really appreciated is how they deal with the food. In the first game, there was a baker bear (who I really liked, by the way) who was actually really terrible at cooking/baking. I found that highly amusing, and I liked talking to her. I will admit, though, at a certain point, I just wanted to get on with my cooking and baking.
I’ve finished the next day in Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), and I want to talk about it, and here is my post from yesterday that talks about it somewhat, but also about series in general. More specifically, how I think series go on for too long.
I want to talk about how sequels are in a no-win situation. I’ll start with Dark Souls II. It was destined to fail, really, because–hey, wait. I just did a quick Google, and while I can’t get an exact number for how many copies of Dark Souls II were sold, it’s at least several million (inclidng Scholar of the First Sin).
But, for many hardcore FromSoft fans, it’s the game not to be named. I, myself, enjoyed it a great deal as long as I didn’t think of it as a Dark Souls game, really, and I’ve certainly played it many more times than I’ve played the first game. It hasn’t aged the best, but I still go back to play it every now and again.
My point is that it’s really hard to make a sequel that pleases the people who love the first game. Why? Because it’s a no-win situation. If you stick too closely to the first game, then people are dissatisfied beacuse you’re not innovating (especially since the first game* was so different that the other games of that time), but if you change it too much, then people don’t like that it’s not like the first game.
This game is like my favorite hoodie that I wear constantly around the house. It’s worn in to fit my body, and it’s super comfortable. There are holes, yes, but I pay them no mind because they’re not showing anything inappropriate.
I really like wandering around and picking up resources all over the place. I can get lost in the little things, which is the joy of this game. I have to be careful, though, because it can become a burden if I allow myself to be dragged down by every little thing.
I think the point of giving the player so many things to do is to let the player pick and choose what they want to do. You’re not meant to do everything all at once, but that’s how my brain works. I want to do it all, and I want to do it all now. I am not good at delayed gratification, and I never have been. I mean, I can do it if I have rewards and such, but just for the sake of it? No.
I like the characters I’ve met so far–even the snooty one who speaks very formally. However, I don’t feel the pull towards any of them that I did in the first game. It’s early days, though, so I’m comfortable with waiting.
I’ve played the second day of Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), and I have much to say about it. (The first day was the demo.) It has retained the “you’ve done all you can do” message from Flamey, which I appreciate. Of course, I can still wander around, pick things up, and turn things in to the, ah, archive thing to make money. I’ll explain that in a bit. Here is my post from yesterday in which I wrote about how much I was looking forward to this game and to The Incident at Galley House (William Rous, Evil Trout Inc.).
I did mention, though, that my emotions were mixed about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit. I played the first part of it when Netflix was trying out its beta gaming desktop, and I played the demo of it when they broke free from the Netflix shackles and could put the game on Steam. The demo is the first day, much like what I played on Netflix.
Side note: I want to do my mini-rant about sequels. For games in this case, but just in general, too. Quick side note to the side note: series should go to about seven units. I’ve had a firm belief about this since I was in my twenties. I’ve seen too many writers feeling like they have to milk their main protagonist for all they’re worth. I don’t blame them, obviously, because you gotta get paid, but….
Let me give you an example. I used to read Sue Grafton’s alphabet series (starring Kinsey Millhone) voraciously. I really liked it when it first came out. However, M was the turning point as it was the last one I enjoyed. Part of the problem was that she set the books so that each one followed the last, timewise. Meaning there was only a few weeks between each book in the books whereas they came out every year or two? I think? That means that even when the actual years went into the internet era, Kinsey was still using a brick phone that did little more than just receive calls.
It got tiring after a while, and it really felt constraining. Plus, the problem is that when you have a really popular protagonist, you can’t mess with them too much. Every book, Kinsey had to say that she cut her own hair and that her landlord is an eighty-year old hottie. I know she had to set up each book in the same way, but it got really old by the time I hit N.
Back to Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit.
The second day took about an hour to finish. I appreciate that it doesn’t take a huge amount of time, but I did feel a bit overwhelmed by all the different quests I were given. I don’t know if I’m remembering this inorrectly, but I felt that quests went much more slowly in the first game, and I wasn’t given as many on the daily.
There was a pacing issue in the first game where the grind seemed too real, and things took too long to do. Again, I appreciated the real-time pacing. I liked being made to wait until the next in-real-life day to continue a quest. However, the economy was a bit too stingy in the beginning. It was too hard to get the things you needed in the first few weeks. I remember looking to the forums when I couldn’t get an ingredient I needed and found out that it was hard to get. I felt like I was barely scraping together enough money to buy what I needed.
By the middle of the game, I was positively rolling in it. I had no need to worry about money, and I could buy whatever I needed. I much prefer that to scraping by, but I wish there was more of a balance between the two. I know it’s a hard balance to get, though, so I’m not going to be too put out by it.
Also, in this game, there’s less of that friction. That’s a word (friction) I kept using in the last post, but I can’t help it. It’s something that games struggle so much with, and it tends to swing from one extreme to the other. FromSoft happened at a time when games were made to be as easy as possible so gamers didn’t ever have to feel like they were failing.
Miyazaki said, “Yeah, no.” Not consciously, maybe*, but he gave no quarters. And that started the era of games being brutal for the sake of being brutal.**
I think this game suffered from the same criticism–well, at least a similar one. Not that it was considered difficult, but you did have to have patience to play it. I know that I might be hanging too much importance on the fact that the changes happened after they got bought out by Netflix, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
By the way. Mad props to the two founders, David Edery and Daniel Cook, they took a cut in salary to buy back Spry Fox from Netflix and they increased the profit for their employees. I paid a higher price for the game than I could have because I wanted to give more to them (same with the other game I talked about yesterday, but I’m not talking about that game here because I have not played it yet).
I have a warm feeling playing this game. I’m eager to see where it’s going and if I’ll gel with any of the bears as much as I did with some of the NPCs in the last game. I’ll write more about it the further into the game I get. There have been a few QOL improvements, but there have also been some that I’m not as sanguine about. As to the latter, I’ll see if they change with a future patch.
*That’s an argument I’ve had several times–whether Miyazaki loved his players or hated them. I always maintained that he was indifferent to them. He just wanted to make the gorgeous, twisted worlds without any thought to the player.
**Which, by the way, misses the whole entire damn point. It’s the exploration and the grim fantasy that matter. Yes, there’s difficulty in From games, but that’s not the point.*** It feels almost incidental for most of the game. Like, yes it’s difficult and yes the worlds are intricate with no crossover.
***Well, mostly. Not going to get into that in this post because I’ve written about it ad nauseam in the past.
I am eagerly looking forward to two indie games. One was released yesterday, and one will be released today. The former is The Incident at Galley House (Willim Rous/Evil Trout Inc.), and the latter is Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). As I thought, I can not yet return to Schrödinger’s Call (Acrobatic Chirimenjako) because each chapter takes so much out of me.
I want to be clear that this is not a complaint–not at all. I am appreciative that this game is maknig me feel things. I just have to pace myself because I have a hunch it’s only going to get sadder from here on out. Sadder and weightier.
Let’s talk about the two games I mentioned in the first paragraph. The first is by the devs who did The Roottrees are Dead. I loved that game, and it made me feel clever. However, I did what I always do, which was to binge it until I finished it, and then I felt slightly sick. It was as if I had over-indulged. I went right into the DLC, but after about twenty minutes, I had to stop. It wasn’t the DLC; it was me. I had burned myself out on it, and I just could not do any more of it.
Hm. I might be able to go back to it now.
Anyway.
Their new game.
It’s not a new game, exactly. Last year, they had a text-based game called Type Help. I had heard of it, but I did not play it. People in the Discord who have played it were raving about it, but I’m just not big on text-based games. I love to read, but not when I’m trying to play a game. I don’t know why, but that’s just how it is.
This is…not the sequel to it, exactly. It’s an adaptation with a glow-up and some extra content, apparently. I don’t know much about it because I don’t watch trailers for games I know I’m going to play if the games are mysteries or need you to go in unspoiled. I had heard that this is definitely a game that you don’t want to know anything about before playing, much like The Roottrees are Dead was.
I know it’s a murder mystery. That’s all I know about it. The graphics are good from what I’ve seen–which again, isn’t much. I’m trying to avoid everything, and that means that I know very little about it. There are 59 reviews on Steam, and they are Very Positive. That’s the extent of what I know about the game.
As for the second game. I’m so excited about it, but I’m also apprehensive. Why? There are so many reasons. First of all, Spry Fox, the devs, were bought by Netflix (willingly, I hastily add) after the success of their first game, Cozy Grove. Which, by the way, is on my list of top five favorite non-From games of all time. I think I have it at fourth. It was my go-to game for so many days in a row, and after my medical crisis, it was one of my comfort games.
I’m back for the third and final post about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo. I want to talk about what I liked and didn’t like in the demo. I have said that the aesthetics are not my style, but they grew on me in game one. Let me rephrase that. The environments are vivid and the bears are cute; it’s mostly the player character that leaves me feeling a bit empty. I got used to it, though, anad I loved being able to dress them up as I wished. There were so many cute outfits, and I had to buy them all.
Here’s my post from yesterday about the basics of the first game and how the demo has differed so far. In this point, I’ll talk more about that and what I hope the sequel will have. And won’t have. Oh, and I’ve included the trailer from the original game below since I’ve included the trailer for this game in the last two posts.
I left off the last post by talking about how the quests seem much easier to finish in this game than the first, at least in the demo. I have mixed feelings about that because while it was frustrating in the first game to have to wait literal days to finish quests, I’m not sure I like finishing them in a matter of minutes, either. Then again, they may just be the first steps to a bigger and longer quest. I think I would be pleased if that was the case. I think that would be a good middle ground. Have some quests that can be finished in the current session and some that might have to wait until the next day.
Actually, that might have been how it was in the first game. It’s been some time since I’ve played it, so I’m not sure. It’s weird, though, because the ones you do in the moment seem to be too easy to finish. I will say I was frustrated by one thing. There’s a way to fix the bus, and you have to find several different parts. I could not find one part for the life of me, and I realized that it’s because they did not want you to find it in the demo. Or maybe not at all beacuse once the bus is fixed, presumably it can be driven. Though how it was drivin onto an island, I am unsure.
I hope that the cast of bears I have to help will be as memorable and endearing as they were in the first game. I’m a bit wary of the content creator bear, but I mean it is part of the current social landscape. Meaning, it’s a valid job, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be represented in the game. And yet, I’m a bit wary because they are already doing the ‘like and subscribe’ vibe that is so off-putting to me. They, themselves, though are very sweet.
I like that in the first game and in this game so far, there are a wide variety of characters. It’s one thing I appreciate in cozy games–so many of the devs are deliberate about maknig their games inclusive. Not just racially, but sexual orientation, disabilities, gender identity, neuroatypicality, etc. Even religion has been touched upon in some games, as well as spirituality. Death is definetely dealt with, too–and in a sensitive manner.
I want to talk more about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo for several reasons. Here is the post I wrote yesterday about it in which I talked about the basic mechanics of the first game. I had to do it because the second game uses much of the same mechanics, has the same aesthetics, and (so far) has the same story beats.
Here’s one thing, though, that the first game had that this game so far does not. I mentioned that one of the biggest hooks of the first game was that it ran in real time (sort of). The story events often spanned several real-life days, which meant you could not do a whole event/quest in one day. Not even if you played for several hours on end. If you had to wait a day or two for something to happen, you had to wait an actual day or two.
There were seasons that lasted two months each with a transition month in between each season (I’m doing this by memory and may be off a bit). There are resources that only showed up in certain seasons, which was an interesting call. I’m talking bugs and trees, and maybe flowers? I don’t remmeber if those rotated as well.
It was an interesting decision, and the devs did it in part because they wanted players to be thoughtful about the amount of time they played the game a day. The counter to that was they had rotating side quests plus a bunch of other things you could always be doing (such as resource gathering) so you could spend more time in the game a day than they wanted. Also, with all the side quests, you could spend all your spare time in that game.
I had mixed feelings about that philosophy. In the beginning of the game, the grind was excruciating and real. There’s a fine line between asking your players to be patient and just wasting their time. In the start of this game, I feel it’s slightly on the latter side. However, there was enough that engaged me so I kept playing. I will admit I looked a few things up to see if I could hurry things up, but the inevitable response was to just wait.
I can’t remember what the ingredient/resource it was that I couldn’t find, but I found myself getting more and more impatient. Every day, I would log on and check to see if the resource was there. Every day, it was not. I don’t remember how much time it took to get that one resource, but I did manage to get it at some point. I think it was within a week.
I was frustrated by the grind and how slow everything was going. And yet. There was something about the game that kept me coming back. It was the bears, for sure. I really liked several of them and learning their stories. Their lives were often tragic, but there was a lot of heart on display, too. I could relate to something with almost all of them, and there were none of them that I wanted to throw into the ocean.
I liked doing favors for them and making their last journey as panless and peaceful as possible. I didn’t always like them, but I was willing to be their listening ear.
In addition, there was something comforting about doing my routines every day. Check all my resources. Talk to all the bears who had open quests. Go to Mr. Kit’s store–by the way. I love Mr. Kit. He’s a big fox, and he runs the store. I really want to know his story, but he is tight-lipped in the first game. I believe I asked him a few questions about himself, but he deflected them. For someone whom I talked to every day, I knew very little about him.
He was so useful, too. He sold different hairstyles, and I loved switching them up on the regular. He also sold clothing, and I bought every single one. There were unique outfits, some of them season-themed, and I always liked switching them up on the regular.
Mr. Kit also sold storage space, and it got really pricy the more you bought. Of course it did. Once you got a taste of it, you get hooked and need more. He was the only vendor who sold storage in the game, so of course I was going to keep paying him for it.
One of my negatives of the first game–wait. I’m here to talk about the demo of the sequel, not the first game.
The quests go by so much more quickly in the sequel, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I know that it’s probably because of the criticism the devs received for the glacial (and steep) beginning part of the first game, but I also think it’s because it was initially a mobile game. There were no microtransactions in the game, and it was free to play.
I’m assuming there will be a price on it when it comes to Steam, and I am more than fine with it. The original, which came out on my birthday in 2021, was $14.99. That turned out to be a steal–I would happily have paid twice that price by the time I was done with the game. Yes, I know that is a fallacy because would I have paid $30 up front? I would have hesitated. Mightily.
Then again, I took a big chance on Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock), which was $25 and had an art style I didn’t love. Why do I always think it was thirty bucks? I don’t know. But I went back to read what I wrote about it, and I said that after playing the game, I would have payed fifty bucks for it because it was so crammed with content. Much like I felt about Cozy Grove.
I’m not sure I like how easily the tasks are accomplished in the sequel, though. Just to reiterate. Part of the charm in the first game was having to wait hours/days in real time to finish tasks/quests/story beats. I was hoping that since the game was coming back to Steam, maybe they would rejigger the tasks/quests. I realize that’s really hard to do, thouggh, so I can understand why they wouldn’t want to do that.
That’s all for today. I think I have one more post in me so I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
Let’s talk more about the demos I’ve played recently. Yesterday, I started talking about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo, which is the sequel to Cozy Grove. As I mentioned, it’s one of my top five non-From games of all time. I think I’d put it at three or four. (Behind Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall) and Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) definitely. I’m not sure if I’d put it before or after Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! (Vertigo Gaming. They are essentially tied.)
The art design is not my cuppa, but it grew on me. I liked the environments for the most part and the bears–it’s just the humans that turned me off, actually. It’s a bit too cutesy for me, but I can get past that because the game is so engaging.
As I said, one of the key hooks in the first game is that it ran in real time (sort of), and you could only do a set parts of the storyline quests per day. There were always side quests you could do at any time (and they rotated, so I got pretty tired of finding six cogs buried in the leaves (made-up example, but indictative of the side quests) for one of the bears every two weeks or so).
This was one of the games that saved me after my medical crisis. I was sad that I had broken my streak of days playing the game when I had was in the hospital for two weeks, but then I picked it up again once I was able to play games again.
When I was in the hospital, one of the physical therapists told me that one way to do rehab was to play video games. My brother laughed and said that I could probably handle that. The PT said that she and her son played an hour of Breath of the Wild (Zelda) every night together.
On the fourth or fifth day I was home , I fired up Dark Souls III (FromSoft). At that time, it was my favorite game of all time. I was still wobbly, so I didn’t do any fighting. Instead, I ran around Firelike Shrine, which is the hub world in this game. It’s a reimagining of Firelinke Shrine from the OG Dark Souls, and it’s fucking gorgeous. The first time I walked into it, I had tears in my eyes. It was a sight to behold, and it warmed my heart.
The first time back after doing a respawn in real life, I had tears once again. I could not believe I was alive and running around in my favorite video game in my beloved big hat (Sage’s Big Hat). I was so overcome with emotions and grateful to be alive.
I cannot believe it’s June already. How the hell did this year go by so quickly? In part it’s because it’s been mostly winterlike that it doesn’t feel as if time has advanced. or rather, we were stuck in one day for months. *Stridently ignoring world around me*
Summer Game Fest was on Friday, and there were some decent games. Nothing for me, though, as the ones I was most interested in were first-person. which I can’t play because I get nauseous. I also watched the XBox Direct yesterday. It was really good for the first half (if you care about the big games), but then it draaaaaagged in the second half. Plus, ending on COD was so ugh. Didn’t they learned from last year that the people who like that game doesn’t watch the show and vice-versa?
The big show was solid if you like Triple A games. I’m not a huge fan, but Geoff kept things moving. Hm. I’m trying to remember any game that really hit me hard. I’m looking at a list of the trailers, and there really wasn’t much for me. There was one game that intrigued me and it had the prologue on Steam. It’s called 1666 Amesterdam (Panache Digital Games), and it looked to be about witches in Amsterdam. I will admit that having black cats in it sold me on it, and I eagerly downloaded the prologue.
I will say, that the twenty minutes (slight exaggeration) of installing the sliders was not a good start. The graphics were rough, and I’m not someone who cares much about that sort of thing. When I’m looking at/playing an indie game, I’m very forgiving of flaws. I know it’s a small team of, say, under twenty people. So, yeah, it’s not going to look like a Triple A game.
The man who founded this studio was the creator of the original Assassin’s Creed. Even though I don’t vibe with those games, I have to show respect to the man who came up with the idea. Or not. But my point is that he’s a luminary in the industry. The tralier for his new game was interesting, even though the graphics were, ah, janky, at best. Plus, as I mentioned, black cats.
This game was coded for me. Witches, magic, and black cats? Hell to the fucking yes! I was interested in all those things, and once the shaders did their things, and I was finally in the game, I was eager to see what was going on. I did not love the graphics as I mentioned, but I was willing to overlook it. For now.
The controls were shonky and just did not feel good. Also, the game starts with you as the female protag walking around. Slowly. You can use your magicks to do wondrous things like light torches. I mean, really? And from what I remembered, it was very slow going. Meaning, it wasn’t just light up the torches simultaneously. You had to hold down the LT to ignite your wand or whatever and then use RT to actually light. I’m not sure those are the actual controls, but they were something similar. And it was so awkward.
I’m going to do one (hopefully) final post about sequels. Not because I don’t have plenty to say about it, but because I’m ready to move on. In the last post, I griped a lot about how irritating subs have become. This is not specific to video games, but just in general. Ten bucks here and ten bucks there, it’s really not worth it if you don’t watch a ton of movies and/or TV. There’s Netflix and then Amazon Prime (on which you have to sub to sub-subs to watch most anything), Hulu, and Disney Plus as the big four. But there are so many more tahn that, I’m sure. Amazon Prime is $139 a year (which is basically $11.50 a month). The cehapest Netflix membership is $7.99 a month. That’s with ads. Hulu is $9.99 a month with adds or $99.99 a year. Disney+’s cheapest plan is $9.99 a month with ads, and you can’t download the content.
Netflix was supposed to be that, but things have become so splintered in the past dacade or two. And now that they’ve made my tier ad-supported, well, it guarantees I will not watch anything on Netflix. I tried to after the change was installed, and I could not stand it. I have ad-blocker installed, and I will not watch anything with ads. And, yes, you could argue that I could upgrade for ten bucks, but it’s simply not worth it to me. $7.99 is barely worth it to me–and I’m actually thinking about giving it up.
Netflix says that I’ll be pleasantly surprised how few ads there are at this level. Um, no. I used to pay the same amount for NO ads, so any ads more than none is not pleasant. Look. I get it. They need to make money. I have no problem with that. I can even see (begrudgingly) why they added ads to their lowest tier. But do not try to make it sound like a positive when it is not. Had they said, “We need to keep up with the times and our profits are flagging. We’re keeping the $7.99 tier, but we have to add ads to that level in order to make us competitive.” I might not have believed them, but I would have at least begrudgingly accepted t hat they had to do what they had to do.
But do not try to pretend that you’re not adding a negative when that’s clearly what you’re doing. Any ads is more than no ads for the same price. That’s a negative for the consumer, no matter how you slice it.
Back to sequels. Dark Souls III is tied for my favorite FromSoft game (with Elden Ring). Here’s the thing, though. It is very much comfort food and the ‘best of’ album that an aging rock band puts out after twenty years of playing together.
I want to talk about sequels some more because I can. This is the fourth post about sequels, and I want to talk specifically about the Cozy Grove sequel. I wrote about my impressions of it (Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox)), but I got stuck on the idea of sequels.
I went deep into the rabbit hole of the different Dark Souls II launch trailers, which I have not seen before, as I was thinking about sequels. FromSoft trailers always go hard, and one reason I skip them is because they give so much away. Yes, it’s hard to tell what is what without context, but still. They show late-game bosses, which is just wild. In fact, for Dark Souls III, the final boss was the box art.
I have not played more of Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, and there are several reasons for it. But first, I’d like to reiterate that this is a mobile game. The only reason I played it at all was because I was somehow included in the Netflix beta, which I did not know until I went to Netflix for the first time in quite some time. It’s funny because I went there to cancel my membership (another post for another day), and to my surprise, I was able to play Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit on my PC. I was stoked because there was no way I was going to play the game on mobile.
By the way, in searching for the reveal trailer, I stumbled on a Reddit thread from Cozy Grove fans who were heartbroken than the game was going to be a Netflix exclusive AND a mobile game. A few people were scolding the people who said they were mad/upset/disappointed because games cost money! Yes, they do. And as I stated in my quick look at the sequel, I am not upset at Spry Fox for grabbing that Netflix money. They need to get paid and they need to eat.
However. I am also with the stalwart fans who are upset because in order to play the game, you have to keep your Netflix membership in perpetuity AND you have to play the game on your cell phone. With a teeny tiny screen. Someone pointed out that the cheapest subscription is $7.99 a month, which is $95.88 a year. It might have been a bit cheaper when the game came out because they raised their prices fairly recently, but it wouldn’t have been that much cheaper.
I wonder how many people have played the game versus the first game, but I don’t think it would be easy to find that data. I don’t think Netflix would be freely letting that out into the wild. Also, please stay in your fucking lane, Netflix. I mentioned this earlier as well, but I don’t think they are doing the right thing as they try to get into the games biz.